For Immediate Release:
June 8, 2021
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
New York – Because Millennium Hotels and Resorts continues to sponsor the Iditarod even after other companies have dropped their support, PETA has posted an enormous billboard just half a mile from the Millennium Hotel Broadway Times Square that shows a freezing dog chained on property owned by former Iditarod champion Mitch Seavey. The ad calls on Millhellium to “check out” of the race’s cruelty to dogs.
“Imagine providing hotel guests with only a dilapidated box or plastic barrel to protect them from freezing wind, rain, and snow—that’s what Millennium Hotels finds acceptable for dogs who want nothing more than to spend the night comfortable and indoors,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges Millennium to embrace the 21st century and end its support for this cruel, archaic race.”
More than 150 dogs have died during the Iditarod since it began. The leading cause of death for dogs on the Iditarod trail is aspiration pneumonia—caused by inhaling their own vomit. Many more have been killed during the off-season because they weren’t fast or fit enough to make the grade. Up to half of the dogs who start the race don’t finish it, and during this year’s race, nearly 200 dogs were pulled off the trail because of exhaustion, illness, injury, or other causes, leaving the remaining ones to work even harder.
ExxonMobil, a major Iditarod sponsor, which paid the race $250,000 a year, ended its decades-long support for it this year, joining Jack Daniel’s, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Alaska Airlines, and dozens of others.
Sled Dogs, a documentary film that shines a spotlight on the dogs who are forced to run until their bodies break down or are killed if they don’t measure up, is available on Prime Video and Plex.
The billboard is located at the intersection of 38th Street and Eighth Avenue in Midtown.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
